기록관리법령상 기록물의 성립요건 - 대법원 2020. 12. 10. 선고 2015도19296 판결에 대한 평석

This case addressed whether document management cards produced during the process of drafting the minutes of the inter-Korean summit meetings held during the Roh Moo-Hyun administration should be classified as official records under the Act on the Management of Presidential Archives. The central issue was the criteria for determining when a document qualifies as an official record according to various record management regulations, specifically which stages of the document production process must be completed for a document to be recognized as an official record. Various theories were proposed, but both the lower court and the final ruling concluded that a document is only recognized as an official record if it has been approved by an authorized person. In fact, Japan, which has a similar record management legal system to that of Republic of Korea, has primarily focused on determining the scope of what constitutes an official record specified in various related regulations based on the nature of the record. Although the discussions in Korea and Japan differ in focus whether they concentrate on the production process or the nature of the records the underlying issue remains the same: defining the extent to which records should be recognized. Japan’s legislative approach recognizes a narrower scope of records. Analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of this approach reveals that considering authorization as a requirement for establishing records, as in this case, is reasonable. However, the case also raised the issue of what constitutes the meaning of the approval act as a requirement for establishing records. The debate centered on whether the approval must always be definitive and indicate executive intent, or if it could vary depending on the nature of the document being approved. If every document were required to have approval indicating decisive intent, then the approval for information providing documents such as minutes, as in this case, would inevitably be interpreted as an intent to approve the establishment of the record. Such an interpretation would not align with the legislative intent of imposing obligations on record production and management, thus might not be considered ideal. In this respect, the case’s approach-acknowledging the potential for varied meanings of approval intent-aligns with legislative purposes. However, given the characteristics of the Easy-one Administration System used in this case, close attention should be paid when applying these findings to the current public records management system, the On-nara BPS System.